White Pelicans and Naked Ladies Kayaking in the Russian River Estuary

Wednesday August 13, 2014 Jenner CA.

Naked ladies in the estuary

As I approached Jenner this morning I could see Ray was already in the water in his boat sitting across the river, so I put my boat in the water and joined him.

We could see some white pelicans in the water, just up river, so we started paddling on up that way.

Roosting white pelicans

Here’s the white pelicans we could see, resting now. The white pelicans seem to be just finishing up eating around the time I get down to kayak, around eleven in the morning and go to roost, as they did today and as I’ve seen them do on other days.pelicans

 

They were preening as we passed.whitepelicans

 

They usually have a little white feather stuck on the end of their bill when they’ve been preening as can be seen in this picture, that little white thing at the end of there bills.pelican

 

Paddling up the river

We continued paddling up the river at our slow pace, stopping along the way, checking thing out as we go.

Here we are just leaving the eagle’s landing area, headed up the shoreline. The wind is down and the high tide is coming in.

riverview

 

Sat at musk rat beach and watched the pelicans flying

We paddled up to musk rat beach and sat for a quite a bit. As we sat, we noticed the white pelicans were flying around in the air in several groups, grouping and ungrouping as we watched. There were quite a few more then the group of about twenty we saw earlier. Some of them seemed to be headed up the river, near Markham hole. They like to land and roost on ship wreck island, which is near there.

The pelicans are just little white dots at the top right in this picture, looking back down to the town of Jenner.jenner

That’s about as good as we could see them sometimes as they flew around way up in  the air.

We watched them for more then an  half hour, at which time we started back down the the river.

I asked Ray if he wanted to go for a walk, and he said yes, let’s do the west end of  Penny island, so we headed on down that way, passing these merganser ducks and the lone cormorant, just as we entered the channel on the back side.birds

 

Penny Island walk

We found a good place to go ashore near the west end of Penny Island and headed out for a little walk. We found trails to get about two thirds of the way on the island and then crossed over on another trail. That got us lost a bit. I hunted for the trail to get us back, but hadn’t realized the trail we took to cross was the same one I was looking for to get back, only in another place, so we eventually had to back track to the original trail were I discovered my error. Trails come and go on the island and are not easy to follow,  as there are no markers and a lot of the time we were in brush up over our  heads. But, it’s a small island and getting lost a bit is just exploring.

This is the view looking up river on the island as we crossed over on the trail that got me lost. There is a trail right in the front of the picture, so you can get an idea of trying to follow a trail.pennyisland

 

We finally did find our way and came out were I intended, near the west end of the island for this view, looking down towards the river’s mouth and Pacific ocean.islandview

 

Where’s our boats

Of course, as we got to where we thought our boats were we couldn’t see them right away as they were in some grass. But eventually, they came into view. One never knows for sure if one’s boat is going to be there, until you see them and it’s always a relief.

Here’s Ray. I caught him blowing his nose. :O)ray

 

A naked lady

Just as I was putting my boat back in the water, I noticed something pink on the big redwood stump that sits in the water in this spot. I had to go over to investigate and here’s what I saw. A naked lady flower was growing out of this old redwood stump.stumpflowers

 

We paddled on, to the water at the west end of Penny Island, were there were a bunch of harbor seals frolicking around in the water, making a lot of splashes.

Russian river mouth area

We watched for a bit, then continued on down to the river’s mouth area. High tide had just come in and the water was mostly slack now, so we didn’t have to fight the current of the water coming in as we sat there. That meant we could just sit and take it easy, which we did.

Here is our view as we approached the river’s mouth, looking out into the Pacific ocean.rivermouth

 

Since it was high tide and no current, we moved a bit further into the river’s mouth and sat at this spot.ocean

 

There were a lot of harbor seals swimming around in the water, around us, as we sat and watched. Some of them were resting on the sand in the water.seals

 

Headed back in for the day and more naked ladies

We headed  back in around four PM I think it was and I spied a lot of pink on the shore as we went, so I went on over as I could see there were a bunch of naked ladies blooming along the shoreline.

Here’s a picture of some of the pink naked ladies. They sure are a very vivid bright pink.nakedladies

 

From there, it wasn’t far to the boat ramp and we were off the water and headed on home.

Intentions

I had intentions of doing some yard work, but instead, I hunted around to see what car parts I had on hand, which took some hunting in my messy garage.  I did find some stuff.

New external hard drive ordered too

Then, I’ve been thinking I need a larger external hard drive to store and back up all my camera stuff, I found a 2T one online and ordered it. One thing leads to another. New camera, new computer, new hard drive storage. I hope that does it.

The new computer is working well. I don’t waste a lot of time waiting for things to happen, like I did with the older one, so I have more time now. :O)

That pretty much was my day for another nice one.

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